Cartoons: (L to R) Citizen Chicane and Songi
HENRY BELL is fascinated by the underlying curiosities and contradictions of one of the great poets of the Mediterranean
DAVID RENTON recommends a books that explores the ways in which disabled people are made to feel both of and not part of this world
JONATHAN TAYLOR is fascinated by the philosophical problems that permeate the art of life-writing
GORDON PARSONS steps warily in between the lines of Britain’s most famous diarist
SIMON DUFF recommends a recording of Arvo Part that takes the listener on a pilgrimage through seemingly distant times and events of the Bible
“FREEDOM and justice for all are infinitely more to be desired than pedestals for a few,” once said Honore Daumier, the legendary French cartoonist and caricaturist, in what is movingly reminiscent of Labour’s rallying cry, under Jeremy Corbyn, “for the many not the few.”
To illustrate what he meant, in 1831 Daumier “put” the king Louis-Philippe on a pedestal only to mercilessly ridicule him, to much popular acclaim.
The cartoon of the monarch, in the comic journal La Caricature, depicted him as the hideously gluttonous Gargantua, a household personage in France and protagonist of the 16th century satire by Francois Rabelais.
